From the beginning, most people on the left were against going into Iraq. I wasn’t. At the time I believed that the United States was under threat from Saddam Hussein. I really truly believed that Saddam Hussein was funding terrorists. We knew that. He was funding the terrorists in Hamas. We knew that he was giving money. We could track that. We knew he hated us. We knew that without a shadow of a doubt. It wasn’t much or a stretch to believe that he would fund a terror strike against us, especially since he would say that. So I took him at his word.

[…] Now, in spite of the things I felt at the time when we went into war, liberals said: We shouldn’t get involved. We shouldn’t nation-build. And there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free. I thought that was insulting at the time. Everybody wants to be free. They said we couldn’t force freedom on people. Let me lead with my mistakes. You are right. Liberals, you were right. We shouldn’t have.

Welcome to the club, I was wrong, too. Dunno why it took so long, but for once, you are right. Now stop being so foolish about everything else. Do what you did right there, and rethink your position.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2014-06-17 21:01:272014-06-17 21:01:27The Flames Are Long Gone, But the Pain Lingers On

Only problem is he is creating straw men. The arguments he is talking about were rarely mentioned by opponents of the war.

Instead, we talked about how Saddam wasn’t a threat, which was fairly clear to anybody who really looked at it. Saddam wasn’t financing Hamas. He almost certainly didn’t have WMDs, and he definitely would not get involved with al Qaeda.

The Bush administration had already pretty much declared it wasn’t interested in nation building. In fact, our men and women in the military were told we weren’t there to nation build, we would leave that to others.

I don’t think we said anything about Iraqis not wanting to be free. We were very concerned about how that freedom would be used, fearing pretty much what has happened.

And most of us had a real fear that it was going to take a lot of years and a lot of lives before it was done.

So I am glad he realizes he was wrong, but, he was even wronger than he thinks he was.

@Violet: It could easily be that the religious nut wing of the GOP is trying to distance themselves from the neoconservatives. Many paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul were not in favor of the invasion to begin with so it’s not hard to envision the Christianists splitting off from the likes of Bill Kristol and Paul Wollfowitz.

It wasn’t much or a stretch to believe that he would fund a terror strike against us, especially since he would say that. So I took him at his word.

Did he actually say that? Why would Saddam Hussein fund a terrorist strike against the US knowing the reply by the US would be another military strike that would remove him from power? It makes no sense for Hussein to endanger his power and dictatorship just because he hated the US.

Also in related news, Charles Krauthammer’s old portrait is discovered.

I wouldn’t trust his change of heart if I could rip it from his chest and interrogate it myself. And no, I wouldn’t put it back. That man is responsible for not just perpetuating evil, but making it mainstream.

The latest from the New York Times on the capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala notes that at the time of attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, he told other Libyans he did it to take revenge for that anti-Islam video that sparked protests and riots across the Middle East

Some what off topic but the NYT is reporting that the guy we capture is telling people that the movie did play a part in the attack. I understand why the elephant can’t admit that but why the realty based world has a problem with the concept that peoples motives are complex is depressing. It is entirely possible that the movie was just one of many reasons why the mob attacked the embassy.

unlike Cassidy and Cacti and different church lady you, John Cole, have not been supportive enough of al Qaeda’s efforts to overthrow the godless infidels of the Assad regime, to behead the secular, to car bomb the innocent, and to execute Assad regulars in the Syrian Army.

please get with the program, or Cassidy, Cacti, and different church lady will continue to be very very disappointed in you.

You really have t go back to the start and read the transcript of the initial tv interview with Susan Rice to see how overblown the whole “Susan Rice lied” line of inquiry is.

I don’t think you should do that because it’s a waste of time (it doesn’t matter to the story they created) but the “Susan Rice Talking Points Scandal” was a dead end from the start. They chased after nothing. All of them.

I don’t know what happened there. I wouldn’t fall over dead from shock if I found out the CIA or the Administration or the State Department hid something or other, but I for one have no idea what they might have hidden based on what Susan Rice said. There is just nothing in that interview, and that’s what the whole thing is based on.

Tragically, all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing.
– Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit,” 6/13/2014

All we fought for in Iraq.

All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp of vanishing.

That’s what Mitt Romney says.

We fought for. We fought for. We.

Oh, so it’s we now, is it, Mitt?

We.

I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We. The guy who helped set up “pro-draft” rallies and yet somehow managed to avoid service in Vietnam is upset about losing what “we” fought for? We.

yes, in the initial stages Islamic Resistance Movement was assisted (actively and passively) by Shin Bet as a counterweight to the left elements of the PLO. Fatah had many leftwing elements (and still does, see Barghouti, rotting away in an Israeli jail) but also the then strong PFLP within the PLO. Israel funded and encouraged Mujama Al-Islamiya in the 1970s, registering the group as a charity and helping them set up a university, along with clubs and schools at the elementary and high school level.

You mean Detroit? It is my 2nd trip to NN but I think I will be better at it this time because now I understand the flow of it – it’s extraordinarily busy. By now you may have noticed I’m not really a speedy quick person.

Cassidy says:
September 10, 2013 at 3:38 pm
@Donut: Feel better? Good, now let me tell you why you’re a fucking idiot. Of course it’s not over you rube. Hell, I’ll be surprised if Syria turns over a quarter of its CW arsenal. This is all theater. That’s it. But, Assad has had his winkie slapped, Russia gets to oppose us and have Syria not be the asshole on the playground, Obama doesn’t bomb shit and never really wanted to, and lastly, Syria doesn’t use CW again except for small, ambiguous attacks with the next large scale use of CW committed by the rebels after they capture a stockpile. The rest of the world gets to go back to ignoring the civil war in favor their preferred sport, you still get to use dead metaphors, Cole can write about cats and contemplate life as the cat lady, and Mix and AL get put on suicide watch now that once again Obama isn’t worse than Bush, Mao, and Hitler having threesome while GG faps away and films it at the same time.

I’m a little curious why they seem to dislike Rice so much. She qualified every bit of those answers. She just didn’t say anything conclusory or damning, ya know, if you read the actual words.

I don’t think she says anything different than “administration spokespeople” (any administration) ordinarily do, they hedge and qualify everything and always have, but I do like her rat a tat tat delivery and how intense she is. That’s why I don’t get the hostility towards her.

At any rate, it is in one sense comforting to know how things will play out. This will ramp up for a while, we’ll build a group of nations who have military might and similar business interests “coalition of the willing,” we’ll bomb the fuck out of some people with “surgical strikes” that will “send a message that the international community is serious” and undoubtedly kill a shitload of people accidentally have some collateral damage, but at least we are “doing something.”

@Kay: I agree the whole Rice thing was and is a dead end. The talking points just like any initial reports of a battle or a school shooting are fragmentary and usually wrong. The GOP has nothing else to hang an ‘Obama lied’ scandal on.

The sad thing is legitimate issues like how do we protect our diplomats in dangerous situations or exactly what was the CIA was up to since it really was a CIA operation under state department cover never get answered.

Cassidy, mocking Cole for applauding Obama when the POTUS was informed by the Defense and Intelligence agencies that it was al Qaeda, not Assad, that had been using chemical weapons, and Obama cjhose not to bomb bomb bomb Syrtia:

Cassidy says:
September 18, 2013 at 9:11 am
@sherparick: Nuance is not how this place works. This is Cole’s MO: first he states some dipshit opinion, then later throws a post up like this several scotches in having an argument with a several straw men because he doesn’t read his own blog and prefers to pretend that everyone had the same opinion and different from him. Finally, he pats himself on the back with the non-wanking hand for having an opinion he never fully expressed and forgetting about the dumb shit he said in the first place. Cole doesn’t do nuance.

I wonder about it. I wonder if it’s a situation where they say “there was something there but we so jumped the gun with Susan Rice that by the time we sobered up everything else we might have followed was a big, convoluted mess”

Maybe they just plain screwed up, in their eagerness to nail her on that meaningless interview. The response to that interview was insane. They hung with it for so long, too! There just aren’t enough words in it to hold up this whole “coverup” theory. Eventually they were going to need more than that interview, but it’s like they couldn’t stop returning to it.

Obama doesn’t bomb shit and never really wanted to, and lastly, Syria doesn’t use CW again except for small, ambiguous attacks with the next large scale use of CW committed by the rebels after they capture a stockpile. The rest of the world gets to go back to ignoring the civil war in favor their preferred sport, you still get to use dead metaphors,

how many things can Cassidy be wrong about al Qaeda in Syria? I mean besides his mocking of Cole for questioning whether it was Assad or al Qaeda that used chemical weapons?

@Kay: Given the general set of conspiracy theories held by a big chuck of the GOP base and way to many of their senate/house members, they were primed to believe anything negative about the Kenyan usurper. And the story was just so simple and easy to understand. Not a lot of moving parts as opposed to what really happened that night with it’s conflicting time lines..

low level “intelligence” worker drones can not fail, they can only be failed. poor Cassidy. btw, Cole was talking about Obama’s decision not to bomb Syria on the dubious assertion that the Assad regime, rather than al Qaeda (as it was later shown) that used chemical weapons. Cassidy termed this a “dipshit opinion” produced by too many scotches. Get Your war On, Cole!

Glenn Beck’s totally losing his shit. For the past couple of weeks, he’s been lamenting how divided the country’s become, as if he had nothing to do with that. He beseeches his listeners to stop labeling everyone, and then he returns to ranting about Progressives and the Agenda of the Left. He’s beyond lunacy.

That one though (to me) had enormous potential to be hinky, just because it involved so many big political players and it was election time.

Like I said, I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was deception of some kind. I just think chasing that one interview as a smoking gun was utter and complete bullshit.

I think they conduct everything like campaign journalism now, like it fucking matters if Rice didn’t do a “good job” explaining or something. She revealed next to nothing. She’s not running for the Senate. We’re not measuring her ability to make credible or persuasive statements. We might be, but that has to go somewhere. It’s like they ended up with “Susan Rice comes off as untrustworthy so therefore won’t capture Pennsylvania’s electoral votes”

to really get a good idea where Cassidy is coming from I recommend this Drone War thread from 2009. very revealing critique Cassidys opponents make about the military industrial complex that produces thousands of Cassidy’s, year in and year out.

Lots of people have pointed out that Rice had crossed McCain long before Benghazi–e.g.:

“Rice’s put-down of Clinton was tame compared with her portrayal of McCain during 2008, which no doubt contributes to McCain’s hostility toward her today. She mocked McCain’s trip to Iraq (“strolling around the market in a flak jacket”), called his policies “reckless” and said “his tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later. It’s dangerous.”

It was Rice’s own shoot-first tendency that caused her to be benched as a spokesman for the Obama campaign for a time in 2008.”

Hah! Thanks. I like that about her, actually. She’s an extremely intense person. Maybe that’s it. They know she can blurt things out, has that tendency, so they were baiting her or trying to trip her up. I’m okay with them trying. I just think one has to admit when one does not actually get the result one is looking for.

“We caught her in a lie!” No, you really didn’t, not by any ordinary reading of what she said. If we secretly know she’s a liar and involved in a cover-up, maybe, but ordinary people didn’t start with that.

Would anyone be at all surprised if there were an investigation into the circumstances surrounding them picking this person up? The only question is did they pick him up to save Obama, Clinton or Rice. All three?

And there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free. I thought that was insulting at the time. Everybody wants to be free. They said we couldn’t force freedom on people. Let me lead with my mistakes. You are right. Liberals, you were right.

And unfortunately there is also no indication that the people of America have the will to be free. As we’ve seen from the commenters auditioning for the American gestapo (mnemosyne, omnes omnibus, martin, burnspbesq, raven, eemom, ad nauseam), Americans in 2014 violently rebel against the prospect of asserting their civil rights and yearn for a strong tough leader who will relieve them of the annoying necessity for governing themselves.

Hey…it was a nice political experiment for a couple of hundred years. But now the experiment is over, and wannabe-serfs like mnemosyne are delighted to live in an armed garrison state under undeclared martial where (in Richard Nixon’s words) “if the president does it, that means it’s legal.”

May your chains rest lightly upon you. I hope when you’re taken away for enhanced interrogation, you break quickly and confess to all the imaginary crimes the prosecutors demand, the better to save yourselves and your families unnecessary torment. You don’t want to try to keep holding out until they start running power drills through your spouse’s kneecaps and pulling out all your daughter’s teeth and using acid on her eyes.

@mclaren: Hey, just off hand, what is my view on the warrantless interception of communications? I am against it. Check the archives. Argue with the real positions expressed by people. Don’t make up shit to fit your fantasies.

Glenn Beck’s going to have to point me to the liberal who said “there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free”.
…
I don’t recall that as a justification for not invading that country at all.
…
I love how he’s set this apology up with him as the crazy dreamer and liberals as people weighing in negatively on “the will to be free”, whatever the hell that is.

Yeah, if that’s his self-reflection, he’s still got a ways to go. There were no leftists or liberals saying that the Iraqi people didn’t have “the will to be free.”

The people I do remember saying that were right wing bloggers about a year after the invasion, after the whole “we’ll be greeted as liberators” turned out to be a crock, and their reaction was, in essence, to blame the Iraqis for failing to greet us as liberators, because the dumb ungrateful fucking hajjis just didn’t understand and appreciate the great gift we’d given them.

(Money quote from Bill Whittle of [later] PJMedia, who phrased it as “we fight for the freedom of a people who have not yet earned it.”)

@Kay: Was there deception. Well, yes in two ways. Number one there was a certain amount of spin but that is as old as the republic. Second. just like the cops don’t tell all they know about a crime, I’m sure the White House had more information than they released. If they had revealed all they knew and some of the attackers got away as a result the GOP would be screaming about that. Obviously by keeping the information a secret did not result in capturing anyone at the time but that is hind sight.
This is just part of the ongoing campaign that Obama is not a real American, that he wants to destroy the country and really sympathizes with the terrorists. Graham calls him delusional, Limbaugh calls him a man-child, and no one in the GOP dares to stand up (other than McCain on one of his rare good days) and denounce the birthers

“Now stop being so foolish about everything else. Do what you did right there, and rethink your position.”

I’m guessing that he’s contractually obligated to be a know-nothing, moronic, mouth-breathing conspiracy nut* for the rest of his professional career. Too many dollars are riding on this. The invisible hand has him by the throat.